April 2009 - Kitchener Waterloo Aquarium Society

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Filter Schmutz by yours truly) to help seed your newly planted
tank. I could clearly see you had the bug.
Owen’s current favourite: Blue German Rams (4 month old juveniles)
Q. How did you hear about KWAS, and how do you feel about
this type of organization and the benefits it provides to the
hobbyist both beginner and experienced
A. Google. Being from the internet industry I went to Google
and did some reading. I then did a search for “aquariums
Kitchener - Waterloo” and KWAS came up at the top. From
there I discovered the forums, started asking lots of questions,
did a lot of searches on the forum and read a lot of older posts.
After that we just dove in, eventually purchasing a membership
for the whole family.
Q. What has been your favourite fish to keep and why
A. Cardinal tetras because they are peaceful, have nice colours
and nicely offset the live plants. We’ve certainly had our
challenges with them, losing a few batches here and there. A
word of caution, it is a bad idea to get Cardinal tetras flown
through many different airports during the winter months. All
of my current cardinals came from a breeder in Barrie, Ontario
and I’m just about ready to gear up and start trying to breed my
own.
Cam’s first tank 56 gallon planted corner tank
A. For the record, I didn’t actually decide to go for a planted
tank. My wife Tanya suggested we get some real plants instead
of the less aesthetically pleasing artificial plants. We looked over
the costs to setup my new corner tank with live plants and
found it wasn’t too cost prohibitive. That tank started out with
DIY CO2, average lighting etc., but then it just got more and
more high tech to the point where it was a lot more expensive.
We learned to have a lot of patience with that first tank,
suffering through a lot of algae outbreaks. Thankfully we had
the KWAS forums so we didn’t panic too much.
Q. How much of your success with your first setup can you
attribute to what you have learned on the club’s forum and
from other hobbyists
A. Basically we would have given up a bunch of times if we
hadn’t been able to post to the forum and ask what’s going on.
The answers were always quick and concise telling us to stick
with it, giving lots of encouragement and it if hadn’t been for
that help we would have probably gotten out of this hobby.
Instead we have setup another eleven tanks since then.
Q. At what point did you decide you wanted to expand beyond
your first tank and begin experimenting with breeding different
types of fish
Cam’s big tank with about 130 Cardinal Tetras
Q. In December of 2007 you wrote an article for this newsletter
entitled ‘Beginner Planted Tank Success’. For anyone who
hasn’t read that article yet, you and your wife basically decided
pretty much right out of the gate to go for a fully planted
aquarium and you were successful! I remember meeting you for
the very first time in the early spring of that year. You came to
my house to pick up some old filter floss (affectionately named
Two of Cam’s early experimental tanks
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